The squiggle that wouldn’t die: Bakersfield City Council shows off grand display of zero creativity - By N.L. Belardes

Sign design 1: welcome to our field/subdivision


Sign design 2: welcome back to our Southpark "dead man" squiggle


Is Bakersfield city councilwoman Jacquie Sullivan a designer now? Does she have experience in sign and logo design? I read an article in the Bakersfield Californian that reeks of her inability to understand design.

Noticeably absent from the article is any input from a designer. What’s the background of Sullivan and the rest of the council? Artists?

No.

This entire debacle started because a Bakersfield city engineer designed the redesign of the old squiggle signs resting on the outskirts of Bakersfield along Highway 99.

Now, I attended one meeting where the very non-creative Jacquie Sullivan called for the hole on the old Bakersfield sign to be filled in. A mosaic had been offered. No go. Looks like Sullivan got her way with two terrible designs I pulled from the Bakersfield Californian news site.

And now that terrible old Bakersfield city squiggle is back.

Don’t these people have any marketing/creative background? You don’t have two logos for the same product. You don’t spend thousands of taxpayer dollars for a new logo, and then later, incorporate the old into the first after the new logo has been adopted.

Sure, the new leaf logo sucks ass. But it was adopted. Phase out the squiggle then, right? Wrong. Apparently bad design just opens opportunity for worse.

I will say the first new re-design with the mosaic was way better than the two monstrosities being proposed.

The first newly proposed Sullivam design makes welcoming those to Bakersfield look like everyone happily hangs out in fields a plenty. It kind of looks like it was designed by an architect, not a designer. And it’s terrible. There’s nothing in the sign you wouldn’t see in the very unglamorous subdivision architecture outside Bakersfield's newest gated communities.

But please, an open field? That’s the one symbol that Bakersfield can't live without (Like the way some people can't live without "dead man" squiggles? Can’t people already see fields from their car windows? They’ve been passing open fields for the last 25 minutes heading north through Bakersfield, and for hours, if driving from the north…

Noticeably absent are migrant field workers toiling in the sun.

The second sign makes Bakersfield look like a Southpark cartoon horizon. I’m sure it can be made out of felt and every once in a while a new big-headed city councilman’s noggin’ can appear… maybe even have entire scenes to depict holidays, or when Schwarzeneggar is in town. I’m sure he’d like the publicity. A wireless radio device tuned into an open FM channel can beam voices into cars and nearby homes: something with Sullivan’s voice would be perfect…

Perfectly boring.


"Oh my god! They killed the Bakersfield sign!" (with clip art!)

And let me also point out that the Southpark crayon design isn't even using the correct new Bakersfield logo. It's a different font altogether. If you're creating a mock-up, shouldn't you be using the correct logo? Just look at the "B" and the "K". Wrong font. The first sign is closer. But with a careful examination, even that has minute differences. The leaf is slightly off. Sorry, that's ticky-tack of me. Goodness!

There’s something I like to tell people about more than half the corporate artwork you see on signs and billboards around Bakersfield. It’s no comparison to the creativity you’d find in larger cities. I call it the “yes” man problem. Too many times, conservative non-creative business people want advertisements. The ad companies instead of arguing for the sake of creativity become “yes” men and women, and give in to the boring, far too conservative ideas of the folks with the money. Yes, the folks with the money are often the non-creative type.

In this case, it’s an unimaginative city council adding to the unimaginative aesthetics of promotional Bakersfield.

Marketing 101: you don’t have two logos. If you have a new one, don’t be an idiot and blend two past logos into a sign.

"I can't see why anyone cannot like this," Sullivan said in an interview with the Californian.

I don’t know what she’s talking about. I can.

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Monday, February 26, 2007. You can leave your response.